Wagering Over or Under the Betting Total

An alternative to betting who will win a game is betting
the total. This is called total betting, which is a 50/50
proposition on whether the total points scored by both teams
that will go over or under the bookmaker's posted total. This method
of wagering is available for all sports including football,
basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer.

Pricing Betting Totals

The only sport in which it is rather easy to handicap total
betting is hockey. Here, the simple formula, average goals
scored plus average goals allowed for both teams divided by two,
is enough to make a rough prediction. For baseball, all sorts of
other factors come into play, primarily the starting pitcher,
how batters have performed against pitchers with similar stats,
today's lineup, bullpen, etc. Baseball, although complex, has a
lot more useful data that can be factored in to get a far more
precise prediction.

For football betting, there are simply not enough games in
the season to get an accurate figure using points scored and
points allowed alone. For this, the first adjustment required is
to use medians not averages. For example, in the series 15, 7,
3, the median is 7 whereas the average is 8.33. So what you
should do when calculating points scored and points allowed is
to place each into a list in ascending order, and take the
middle figure. You should then weight this against league
average.

So for example:

(Home Team Median Points Scored + League Average Points
Score)/2=A

(Home Team Median Points Allowed + League Average Point
Score)/2=B

(Away Team Median Points Scored + League Average Points
Score)/2=C

(Away Team Median Points Allowed + League Average Point
Score)/2=D

From here, (A+B+C+D)/2 will give you a rough estimate of the
total points you expect to be scored in the game. Of course this
model is far too simplistic to yield long-term profit. No matter
how simple the sport, you'll need to make other adjustments. The
unfortunate news is that if handicapping totals were easy, the
market would dry up and there would be no profit left. Depending
on how ambitious you are, this might actually be good news.

Rather than learning how to price totals, a better strategy
for the ambitious beginner is learning predictive modeling.
There's a written article in SBR moderator Justin7's book,
Conquering Risk: Attacking Vegas and Wall Street by Elihu D.
Feustel. It is available on Amazon, and while not written for
the sharpest of sharps, it's excellent for those needing
advanced fundamentals. Now for those who don't want to wait for
the book, we continue with more helpful advice on total betting.

Understand Key Numbers

When projecting betting totals, it's important to understand
key numbers. For example, in NFL football, the most common total
points scored in order are 41, 43, 37, 44, 51, 33, and 47.
Knowing this we'd be far more likely to bet over 41 when our
model predicted 41.3 than we would be willing to bet under 41
when our model predicted 40.7. While 40 is still a rather common
outcome, 39 and 38 are very low probability totals. Over-41
gives us a push on the most common outcome and a win on very
close second and fourth most common outcomes.

Off Market Prices and Bonuses

With the information just given, it should be very easy to
profit by betting NFL totals. The goal is to take advantage of
sports betting bonuses and off market prices simultaneously.
Specifically, as mentioned in our article on
how to handicap the market, there's such a thing as sharp
books, which are betting sites friendly to professionals, and
square books, which are betting sites that target recreational
players.

What you need to understand is fan bias. The majority of NFL
football fans prefer to bet that something will happen than that
something won't. In other words, betting the over is a lot more
fun than betting the under. This leads to recreational betting
sites such as Bovada often padding the total an extra 0.5
points, thus making the line worse for players betting the over,
and better for players betting the under.

Bovada has total disregard, or might even be unaware of, the
implication of key numbers. Again 41, 43, 37, 44, 51, 33, and 47
are the most common total points scored in NFL games. If you
were to shop Bovada.lv against a
reduced juice betting site looking for spots, the sharp book
has perhaps a 47.0 betting total while Bovada has 47.5. You'd
quickly spot that the under bet at Bovada is close to neutral
expected value.

Finding these near neutral EV bets while having a bonus is
enough to make considerable profits by betting totals. Even
better is when the bonus is a massive 50% cash (yes, cash, not
free play) bonus obtainable at TopBet. Shopping Topbet against a
sharp book like 5dimes, while using the bonus, is a great way to
profit betting totals.

Getting Maximum Value

One way to gain maximum value total betting is to consider if
there's a correlation between the total bet you're making and a
game's point spread. For instance, let's say you're betting the
under based on the fact that Ben Roethlisberger is playing with
less than 100% health, and you believe the Steelers will run the
ball and eat clock. Now if the Steelers are -7.5 favorites in
the game, maybe your opinion that the game will go under also
means their opponent is more likely to cover the +7.5 point
spread. In cases such as this, it's highly advisable to bet the
point spread and total together in a parlay bet.

Odds or Evens

To state what to many is probably obvious, in certain sports,
even and odd number totals make a huge difference. This relates
to low scoring sports such as baseball, hockey, and in certain
cases soccer. Keep in mind that in baseball and hockey, if a
game ends in a tie, it keeps going until the tie is broken.
Considering all ties total an even number of points, an odd
total outcome is more likely to occur than an even total
outcome.

To share a related tip, in soccer matches where ties must be
broken (example: elimination tournaments), an over betting line
of 2.5 has only four ways for the under to win (0-1), (1-0),
(0-2) and 2-0. Notice that the only way for the under bet to win
is for there to occur a shutout. We've actually found occasional
arbitrage bets (bets where you can bet multiple sides
guaranteeing a win) just from taking this into consideration.

Avoiding Suckers Bets

The final thing to mention is flat out sucker bets need to be
avoided. For example, as mentioned earlier, shopping 5dimes
against recreational betting sites such as Bovada. This is most
often profitable because the site is shading the line to make
the odds worse for the more popular selections. This is to trap
fish; if you don't want to lose a fish (the guy for whom they
send the limo), make certain you shop the lines and don't end up
betting the wrong side of a Bovada line shade.

The final tip is for reasons covered in the article on teaser
betting strategy; we strongly advocate never teasing the total.
Making teasers on totals is a long-term losing proposition
you'll want to avoid.